The Same Mistakes
by Juliette's solo act
Summary: An interweaving love story between Snape and Lily and, a generation later, Draco and Hermione. Severus sees his favourite Slytherin pupil making the same mistakes as he himself made. Will he be able to warn him of the consequences in time, or is it already too late? Will love bloom between Gryffindor and Slytherin at last? Takes place in Year Six with flashbacks, obviously .
1. September

**Hi everyone!**

**As (hopefully) some of you will know, I'm writing three first chapters for three different stories. This is the second of three, the first being the marriage law fic called **_**Unweddable**_**, which you can find on my profile. Also on my profile is a poll (at least, it should be there, but it's the first one I've ever made and I wasn't sure how it worked). If I could ask you guys to vote for your favourite of the three opening chapters - and I promise all three will be up soonish - I'd be forever in your debt. Seriously, I would love to hear from you as to which one of these three ideas I should carry further.**

**Enough about that, now. Please review, if you should feel the urge to, and don't be afraid to be critical - I'm working without Microsoft Word, so I don't have the luxury of spell-check and I type rather fast so typos are pretty inevitable. Feel free to point them out, and anything else you think needs work, and I will love you all unconditionally for ever and ever.**

**Other than that, I only have a few more words for you: nitwit, oddment and squeak!**

**(Paraphrasing Dumbledore, let me know if I've misquoted since I'm going from memory here).**

* * *

He visited her grave religiously every year on this day. It was his very own pilgrimage, but it offered no sense of self-fulfilment. It was closer to self-flagellation.

And yet, he couldn't bring himself to stop visiting her. He'd always bring her flowers (never lilies though, she'd always hated them). This time, he brought her a bunch of tiny flowers that recalled the distant past, the moment she showed her sister with pride the petals opening and closing in her delicate palm. He didn't charm them to stay perfect forever - it wasn't something she'd have liked. _Nature is magical enough without our help_, she'd told him once. He'd agreed then, since nature had produced her. Now, nothing was beautiful in his eyes anymore. All the colours had been siphoned out of his life, poured into the coffin where she lay beneath the earth.

He reached out to trace the familiar engraving, the stone cold and rough beneath his fingertips.

_Lily_.

Out of habit, his finger skipped over the letters that spelled out _Potter_, moving straight to _Evans_. Even now, as they rested side by side beneath a shared tombstone, even now as he returned to Hogwarts every year to be confronted by the living thing their two joined bodies had produced, he refused to accept it.

He hated himself for the mistakes he had made that had cost him the ultimate price. He, and he alone, was responsible for her death. Bad enough that his refusal to listen to her regarding his choice of friends (internally, he scoffed at the word 'friends') had driven her into the arms of Potter, but the words that had condemned her to death had fallen from his lips. He may not have cast the spell, but it was his fault.

He envied her her peace. She was free, unchained by human concerns, human failings, human emotions. She was not ravaged, gnawed from the inside out, by a terrible mixture of guilt and anguish. She had not had all the light ripped from her world in a single instant - no doubt she was happy, in the arms of Potter, in a better life.

She was not left behind.

The dew from the grass was beginning to seep through his robes where he knelt, almost in a position of devout worship, before the white stone. He raised his wand and murmured a barely audible incantation, eyes fixed on the glowing tip. A silver doe burst forth from the wisps of light, and regarded him with mournful eyes. She, at least, understood. The doe blinked and began prancing lightly in a wide circle.

The fragile shape of dancing light was his last tenuous link to Lily, and so he loved her.

Sometimes, as now, he conjured her just to be reminded of Lily. When they'd learnt the spell, together, Lily had seemed surprised and delighted to see they'd both produced the same animal. He hadn't been shocked - it could have been nothing else. His heart yearned so strongly to possess hers that he tried for years to mould his soul in the shape of hers.

But he was not pure and good and wonderful as she was: his mind was turned towards darkness, try as he might to pull it towards the light for her sake. He wanted to learn, but to learn the sinister secrets of his world. She, with her flaming red hair, seemed to be a torch for the 'greater good' - a proud Gryffindor, ready to risk everything to fight for the vulnerable. He, with his dark features, melted into the shadows and found that he enjoyed it there.

It was his fault, his own most grevious fault.

If only he'd listened to her supplications, if only he'd been swayed by the tears that made her green eyes shine more brilliantly than ever. _If only_. His silver doe disappeared, disintegrating into wisps of light before vanishing altogether as his mind was consumed by grief and he lost hold of the happy memory that was feeding her corporeal form.

His skill in Occlumency was the only thing that prevented the rising ball of emotions from getting further than his throat - he locked the dangerous thoughts away quickly behind the concrete wall he built in his mind, but the tight ball was still lodged behind his Adam's apple. He lowered his forehead to the ground, the smell of damp earth and the fresh dew against his feverish brow having a calming effect. Had a muggle have seen him now, in this half supplicant half worshipping pose, they would have thought that he was merely a religious man, praying to the sun.

And in his own way, he was doing exactly that. Except that his sun had been extinguished, and now burned brightly only in his memories.

He felt closer to her like this, touching the earth which she too was touching. It was like this that his visit culminated: whispered words to the deaf earth beneath his head, hands and knees. He told her about her son, the boy with the scar and brilliant green eyes. He told her how her boy had grown up to be a true Gryffindor, how he had saved the school again and again. He told her that the boy's eyes were old before his time, how he seemed to carry a heavy burden that no one could ever quite relieve. He told her how Dumbledore had forced them together, another of the old man's games, so that her boy would learn to protect his mind from Voldemort, and he told her how painful it was for him stare into those eyes, _her_ eyes.

He told her all of this, and more, knowing full well that she couldn't hear him, but understanding that this release of words that fell unheard into the ground was more for him than for her. Where ever she was, he knew that she'd be watching her son and she would be smiling. But he was sure that she wouldn't be watching him and smiling, and so he visited the place where her body lay to try and pretend to himself that she was listening to him, that she cared.

His story over, he whispered five more words to the richly-scented earth, before standing, turning on his heel and disappearing into thin air.

_I love you, Lily. Always._

* * *

Draco Malfoy sat at the back of the dank and gloomy Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, flanked by the buffoons he usually associated with. They were chortling amongst themselves, no doubt laughing at some pathetic attempt at wit on Pansy's part, but he hadn't heard the joke. In fact, he hadn't heard much since the lesson had started. His eyes were firmly fixed on the back of a girl's head, as though willing her to turn around. His silver eyes narrowed with his intense concentration.

The object of his scrutiny seemed to feel the eyes boring into her back, and her head turned infinitesimally to the boy on her left to check that his eyes were still firmly shut. Draco leaned forward in his seat so as to get a better look at her profile. Her head snapped back to the front almost immediately, but it was enough time for her face to have been burned into his retinas. He closed his eyes, the better to allow his mind's eye to roam freely over her features. _Something was different. Something had changed, but what was it?_

"Mr Weasley, Mr Malfoy, am I boring you?" a low voice drawled from close to his ear. Draco's eyes snapped open and his cheeks flushed slightly as the rest of the class swiveled in their chairs to face him. Weasley had turned a shade of cherry red and was rubbing a spot on his side where the girl had obviously elbowed him awake. The girl whose face was quickly fading from his mind's eye was giving the ginger boy a look that clearly said _I told you so_. Malfoy allowed himself a small smirk, forgetting that he was currently the object of a rare death-glare from Professor Snape.

"Please explain to me, Mr Malfoy, what is amusing in what I have just said?" the hook-nosed professor intoned, his dark brow furrowing with a look of anger. Draco's mouth opened, about to give a witty response, but he thought better of it and closed it again.

Snape cleared his throat. "Ten points from Gryffindor and Slytherin respectively. The two of you will write me four feet on the importance of what we have been learning today, in addition to the essay I have just set the rest of the class, due in tomorrow. You may all leave."

Draco slammed his book shut with rather more force than was necessary, his anger stemming from the fact that he had absolutely no clue what they had covered in that lesson. His cronies paused to wait for him, but he waved them on dismissively. He really could not face spending any more time in their company, and it was only the second day of term.

Weasley, Potter and the girl walked past on their way out of the door. "_Please_, Hermione, please," the ginger boy was whining, tugging at the sleeve of the brown-haired girl.

"No, Ron. I told you that I wouldn't be letting you use my notes for any of our classes this year. It's our penultimate year - how are you going to survive in the adult world if you _fall asleep in class_?" She said it as though it were the ultimate sin. Draco smiled unconsciously.

"Something funny, Malfoy?" Potter spat, wiping the smile clean off of his face.

"Other than you, you mean? Nope, can't think of anything. Actually, maybe it was Weasley begging the know-it-all for help. I didn't realise you had to resort to second-hand knowledge as well as robes," he said, with a smirk that felt extremely forced. They'd see right through him, they'd know that he'd lingered behind just to watch her walk past him, just to hear her voice.

"Oh, go parrot your father somewhere else, Malfoy," the girl said, before either of the two boys could explode at him. _She sounds tired_, he noted with concern, before reminding himself that he didn't care what she sounded like at all.

Draco stuck his tongue out at the three of them, earning him three identically quizzical looks. He slipped the strap of his bag over his shoulder and dashed out of the classroom before they had time to think. _Mature, Draco, really mature._

He slowed his pace to a walk once he was out of earshot of their bickering and Weasley's pathetic pleading, and headed towards the library, intent on spending his free hour catching up the lesson he had missed entirely. He already had so much to do - mostly catching up on the lessons he shared with the Gryffindors, since it seemed these were the lessons he could remember least of. He really needed to get a grip and focus on his school work, or his father would not be pleased.

With an unpleasant jolt deep in his stomach, he remembered the other thing he had to work on. He shuddered miserably, trying to clear his head of the impossible duty that had been placed upon him. A couple of first years ran past him, squealing with joy as they chased after a toad that had made a bet for freedom. He watched them go enviously - he had never been that free of responsibility in his life. Even before this summer, he had still been a Malfoy. He had still carried the heavy burden of his name, a name that ruled his every thought and action. And this Christmas, he would be forced to bear the mark of the heaviest burden of them all, the biggest sacrifice for his family he had ever made, the last link in the strong chain that would bind him forever to the dark side.

Suddenly, he found himself unable to move, his foot sunk up to his knee in the trick step on one of the staircases. _Damn it,_ he cursed internally, trying in vain to wrench his foot free. The corridor was completely deserted, so he resigned himself to a long wait. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Peeves' characteristic cackle, and his heart plummeted. The screeches of glee were, without a doubt, coming closer, and soon they were so close that Draco could pick out fragments of his song.

"Ickle wickle student is stuck inside the stair,  
but Peevesy is coming with something for his hair..."

Draco wriggled with renewed fervour, desperate to avoid Peeves' skewed sense of practical jokes. Footsteps echoed off of the stone walls like music to his ear - he'd never been so glad to hear anything in his life. He spun around as much as possible, ready to beg (in a dignified manner, of course) for his mysterious salvation to rescue him, but the words died in his throat when he saw who it was.

Her. Of all the people in this bloody school, it had to be her.

He had resolved not to ask her for help, but Peeves' song reached a very audible crescendo involving irreversible changes to his features, and Draco was forced to swallow his pride.

"Er... Little help?" he said as nonchalantly as possible (although his voice was higher than he would have desired due to the very real fear that now possessed him), awkwardly waving to attract her attention. Nose in a book, as usual, she jumped when she heard his voice. She stared at him blankly, as though her mind was a long way away. He coughed, and gestured at his trapped foot.

A smile began to dance on her lips as she was returned to reality, and recognised who it was who was desperately imploring her for help. She said nothing, merely returned to her book and began to walk down the stairs. When she reached him, she lightly hopped over the trick step and continued downwards without a backwards glance.

Draco did something then that surprised him.

"Please, H-Hermione?"

Her head whipped, shock blazing in her eyes. She sighed as though cursing her noble Gryffindor nature, and returned the book to her back.

"Fine," she said quietly. Again, Draco noted how weary she sounded, and again he reminded himself that he didn't care. She grabbed his wrist unexpectedly and Draco, not prepared for the physical contact, jumped slightly. Her eyes darkened, and she wrenched his arm with more vehemence than was strictly required. The stair released his foot with a squelching sound, and he flew forward, knocking the slender girl to the ground.

Draco took an instant too long to extract himself from the tangle of bodies.

"Get...off" she grunted and wheezed from under him. They rolled apart and both lay on the cool stone floor for a moment, their hands mere inches away from touching.

"Thank you," he said at last, breaking the silence between them that was perforated only by their slightly irregular breathing. "That was... nice of you." Goodness, he'd never realised being pleasant to her would be such an effort. His tongue seemed to refuse to form the rarely-used words.

She turned her head to look at him, and their eyes met.

"I didn't do it for free. I expect something in return, you know," she said, in a pensive tone of voice, still holding his gaze.

"What?"

"I haven't decided yet. I'll let you know, sooner or later."

Peeves' voice was getting louder and closer - he could be no more than two corridors away, and he was travelling fast.

"We should go," Draco said, scrambling to his feet and picking up his bag. After a moments' hesitation, he held out his hand to help her up. She looked at the outstretched appendage with distrust. He didn't blame her - it was his wand hand, the same hand that had cast the spell that made her teeth grow to ridiculous proportions. And it was attached to his body, which ought to have been reason enough to scramble away and sprint off in the opposite direction. But to his surprise, she took it. They looked at one another, joined at the hand. The air around them suddenly grew very still.

Then the moment was shattered by the explosive splatter of something green and slimy a few feet away. Peeves had reached their corridor and was hurling unidentifiable substances at them.

"RUN!" she screamed, and pulled him away at a breakneck speed. She was faster than he would have thought, given her slender physique and her hatred for Quidditch and sports in general. He was soon working harder than he liked to keep level with her, distracted by the fact that she had hitched her robes up to her knees, exposing bare leg. She dragged him left, right, right and left again, swerving around corners and ducking behind tapestries at such speed that Draco was completely disoriented by the time she finally slowed to a stop inside a dusty, disused classroom behind a tapestry of a particularly ugly wizard.

"I think... we... lost him," she panted, doubled over to catch her breath. Draco nodded in agreement, knowing that he would not be able to find the air to make his vocal chords work. She sat down heavily, still breathing heavily. And then, all of a sudden, she began to laugh. The peals of pure joy and exhilaration were so infectious that soon Draco found himself laughing with her. He hadn't laughed in such a long time - sure, he snorted derisively almost daily and sometimes if Pansy was lucky he would release a forced chuckle at one of her jokes, but he hadn't actually _laughed_ in longer than he could remember.

Their laughter soon died down due to lack of oxygen, but a comfortable silence took its place. Draco had never in a million years thought that he'd feel this at ease with her. Somewhere deep in the heart of the school, the great clock began to count out the time, and Draco leapt to his feet. She opened her eyes, which had fluttered closed momentarily, and looked at him quizzically. It was funny how easy it was to read what her face was saying.

"I'm going to the library - I've got Snape's essays to write and not a clue what the lesson was on, let alone why it was important," he said, almost apologetically (although why he should be apologetic was beyond him).

She seemed to be internally debating something, as she didn't answer him right away and her brown eyes drifted towards the window in thought.

"Okay. You can borrow my notes for the lesson, on three conditions. One, you never, _ever_, tell Ron or Harry that I helped you. Two, you owe me two favours now. Three, you understand that this is the last time I will help you. I don't care if Peeves has you in a headlock next time - you call for someone else. Deal?"

He nodded, slightly irritated at her bossy tone of voice and unable to suppress a rather exaggerated roll of his eyes. Who was she to be making all the decisions, setting all of these rules for him, a Malfoy, to follow? How easy it was to slip back into the familiar routine of hating her for her lowly origins.

"Here," she said, thrusting a ream of pages at him brusquely. She turned to leave, and was halfway out of the door before he spoke.

"Granger - something's different about you. What is it?" he asked, the words slipping off of his tongue before he could stop them. _You idiot. You stupid, stupid git. You brainless monkey._ He continued in this vein for several long seconds, finding more and more colourful ways to insult his stupidity and trying not to notice that the girl had frozen to the spot.

"Um... My hair. I... My parents took me to this place... they fixed it..." she finally managed reply somewhat awkwardly, unconsciously twirling a lock of her tamed, wavy hair around her index finger.

"Oh. Well. It looks...nice?" he replied, just as awkwardly. He could have sworn her cheeks reddened slightly, but she was gone before he had a chance to see, leaving nothing behind but the faintest scent of citrus fruit.

* * *

_The boy really should be a little more subtle_, Snape thought to himself as he paced the length of his classroom, intoning some drivel about the limits of magic which only the Granger girl was actually listening to. His favourite pupil (a bit of a stretch, but the closest to a favourite pupil he was ever going to have) was staring far too intently at the back of Granger's head.

Granger turned, looking at one of the Weasley offspring who was lightly snoring by her side (a nap which Snape intended not to overlook for much longer), and revealing her profile to the blond boy who watched her. Snape continued to talk. Even he wasn't listening to himself anymore, his mind far too busy thinking about Draco Malfoy's seeming obsession with the muggleborn witch. Draco closed his eyes, a contented smile appearing faintly on his lips. _Enough napping in my classroom, I think._

Snape dished out the punishments, rather laxer than he would normally give, and watched with pleasure as a frown disfigured Potter's features and Weasley's face turned a comical shade of vermillion. The girl laid a calming hand on Potter's forearm, placating the boy who was no doubt darkly muttering insults at Snape under his breath. Snape glanced at Malfoy, noting that his eyes had narrowed with unconscious jealousy.

The situation was so familiar that Snape felt as though he were back in his childhood again, observing himself watching the brilliant muggleborn witch run around with an arrogant Potter and his brainless friends. His poor, shrivelled heart twanged unpleasantly in his chest at the memory of Lily. He couldn't sit by and watch Draco go the same way - he had to stop this before it was too late, before Draco had condemned himself to a lifetime of unhappiness.

Snape had hoped to catch Draco at the end of the lesson, detain him in order to warn him from regarding her with anything more than an appropriate disdain, but the blond boy had exchanged a few terse words with the trio and run out ahead of them. _Damn it,_ Snape cursed, elbowing past a few third years in the corridor outside of his classroom and punishing them with an icy stare simply for existing, _where has that boy gone?_

He paced through the corridors, black robes whipping behind him in what he knew to be an intimidating manner. He'd never had Black and Potter's unnerving knack for finding the people they were looking for around the school, but he had all morning to find Draco. He passed a disgruntled Peeves - who was idly throwing little balls of pulsating green electoplasm at coats of armour, making their helmets spin wildly on their necks - at least three times and on each occasion was forced to make a rather sudden dash out of the vicinity to avoid a viciously hurled blob which was aimed with alarming precision at his own head.

He was beginning to think that Draco was hiding away somewhere, nurturing the forbidden emotions in his heart like the moody teenager he was. Snape's pace slowed and he considered giving up this ridiculous quest. Merlin knew why he had decided to appoint himself guardian of the Malfoy spawn's heart - it was really none of his business. He had made an unbreakable vow, yes, but nowhere in that vow had he agreed to help Draco with this sudden emotional development. Besides, he really needed a coffee - it had been a long morning of staring into green eyes he loved set in a face he hated.

And then his worst fears were confirmed.

Hermione Granger stumbled out from behind one of Hogwarts' uglier tapestries, cheeks suffused with blood and obviously deep in thoughts that were not of a studious nature. Moments after she had rounded the corner, smiling softly yet bemusedly to herself, Draco emerged from behind the same tapestry, sporting a similarly worrying look. His cheeks were also slightly flushed, and he was biting back a secret smile (a smile which Snape didn't like the look of at all).

Snape emerged from the shadows where he had been quietly observing the scene that caused so much turbulence in his mind.

"A word, Draco," he said, in what he hoped was his most threatening voice. Draco's face paled noticeably as his head of house seemed to materialise from nowhere, but he nodded in his superior manner. Snape drew the boy towards the shadows, calculating the spot where they'd be most protected from prying eyes.

"I don't know what you were doing in such close contact with Miss Granger just then, but whatever it was it has to cease immediately. Can you imagine how your father will react when he hears of this? And the Dark Lord, what will he say when he learns that the boy he has trusted with this most important honour has been wasting his time associating with mudbloods?"

Draco began to stutter out incoherent protests, but Snape didn't let him get very far.

"I don't care for your pathetic excuses, boy. I don't want to see this sort of behaviour again - looking at the filthy lowling so obviously in my lesson..." He trailed off in disgust, lip curling. If only Draco knew how every word that came out of his mouth tore at his heart as he heard himself repeating the words that Mulciber and others had threatened him with.

Draco was fired up, forgetting that Snape was Voldemort's most trusted servant.

"I don't know what you mean, _sir_," he said, the mark of respect somewhat ruined by the way the words were hissed between closed teeth. "I would never forget myself in that way, and believe me, I harbour nothing but disgust for creatures like mudbloods. You have no worry on that score."

It was a convincing performance, and if Draco was talking to anyone other than a man who had been lying to the world for half of his life, it would have been enough. However, Snape noted with increasing worry the deepening lines around Draco's eyes, the physical marker of the strain of forcing the lies from his tongue.

"Don't lie to me, boy. That might work on those idiots, Crabbe and Goyle, who follow you around like two brain-damaged puppies, but not on me. Believe me, whatever you think you feel for Granger, it's dangerous. It will only cause you great pain - besides, do you really think she would be stupid enough to return whatever feelings you have for her? You know full well what you are going to do, and you should also know that she will never love the man who murdered her idol." Pain was evident in the boy's eyes. _He's too young for this, spare him the pain_, his conscience murmured, but Snape pressed on. "It's for your own good I tell you this. I don't relish the words, but they are the truth, and it is a truth that you would have learnt sooner or later. In her eyes, you are nothing but a bully. By now, she probably suspects you are a Death Eater, and by the end of the year you will be a monster in her eyes."

"You know nothing about her!" Draco shouted.

"Neither do you. Tell me honestly, how many kind words - or even passably civil words - have you said to each other these past five years?"

Not for the first time that day, Draco's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air.

Snape hated himself for the cruel smile that tortured his lips into a grimace. "As I thought. I may not know her but I do know you, Draco. And I know what you will go through if you do not heed my words. Let me help you, Draco."

"I don't need your help," he said, wriggling out from underneath his head of house and escaping down the corridor.

Snape sighed and returned to his classroom, catching sight of someone ducking behind a door that looked suspiciously like Potter.

**I said at the start that I was going from memory (because I'm away and couldn't bring all seven books with me), so if anyone could find the exact moment in the sixth book where Harry overhears Snape offering to help Draco and copy and paste it for me into a review box thing, that'd be wonderful. Thank you all for reading!**


	2. October

**Sorry that it's been such a long time coming, this update, but I've been travelling and haven't had my laptop with me. I had to handwrite it, and that obviously takes a bit more time. But don't worry, because I've got the next chapter all planned out and have even started it. Cause for celebration, that.**

**I don't have my books with me, though, so if you spot any super errors in this that don't correspond with the books written by the wonderful JK, please tell me so that I can correct them for the future.**

**For the moment, I've decided to continue writing this fic, rather than The Same Mistakes or the marauders one I keep promising, so review and stuff to let me know if you think I've made the right decision.**

**Thank you also to everyone who has favourited or followed this story lately – I don't know if you understand just how encouraging that is. Very, is how.**

**I don't really have anything else to say, other than thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy this next chapter (October time).**

The daily arrival of the post was something that Draco quickly learnt to hate. Where once his mother had sent him care packages that had made the assembled Slytherins' eyes wide with jealousy, now, in a somewhat ironic reversal, his father sent him letters that were more than enough to put him off of his food.

The beating of a thousand wings heralded the arrival of the post, and Draco wrenched his eyes from his breakfast, a spoonful of cereals arrested halfway to his mouth. He looked up, scanning the owls and hoping beyond hope that he would not see the pure black owl with an attitude problem that would announce another letter. His heart soared in communion with the assortment of brown and white owls (_no black, no black, no black_ he chanted in his head), and he felt fearless enough to raise the spoon to his mouth and take a celebratory bite when the familiar owl landed on his raised arm. Draco dropped his spoon with a clatter, spraying Zabini with milk and soggy cereals.

"Shit," he said, losing his usual self-restraint in his surprise. He could have sworn that the owl rolled his amber eyes. Draco ignored the non-verbal reprimand and took the letter from the owl's outstretched leg. The owl looked at him pointedly.

"Thanks," he said reluctantly. The owl hooted huffily and left in a flurry of black feathers. Draco rubbed his arm where the ebony claws had dug into his flesh rather harder than necessary. For a while, Draco played his usual game of ignoring the white envelope beside him, but as usual it was only a matter of time before he picked it up. There was almost something masochistic in the way a tiny repressed part of his psyche found a perverse pleasure in this game he played, seeing how long it would be until he caved.

He slipped his fingers gently between the lip and body of the envelope, breaking the red wax seal that bore his family insignia, as delicate as a lover's touch.

_One day, Draco, you'll truly know what it means to be a Malfoy. On that day our hidden insignia will be revealed to you._ His father's words echoed in his ears once more as the red wax split under his fingers, cleaving the image of the peacock in two; just another reminder that he was a failure, a disappointment, an imposter in his own family.

Today's letter was shorter than its predecessor, Draco noted with relief. He scanned it, barely taking in the recycled words. The main message was always the same, unwavering threat: don't let me down, or else. His shoulders sagged slightly, bowed by the weight he carried around in his heart, as he folded the letter and stuffed it into his robes. He'd burn it later, and rejoice as the creamy parchment disintegrated into black flakes, as the cruel words vanished into nothing. Today, he'd fold the paper first into a tiny owl – he'd been learning about Voodoo, primitive forms of magic, and who better to try it out on than the stupid owl?

It was at that moment that Pansy chose to appear, placing cool hands over his eyes and cooing "Guess who" in his ear in what she obviously thought was a seductive voice. The girl wasn't to know that depriving Draco of his sight, even for an instant, was the worst thing she could have done. She wasn't to know that every night Draco dreamt of a darkness that pressed down on his skull, that deafened him with its silence, that choked him and compressed him until he woke, gasping and sweating.

He wrenched her hands from his eyes, blinking furiously as though drinking in the light that set his irises on fire, and left the dining hall without a backwards glance at the hurt look on Pansy's face. Unbeknownst to him, two pairs of eyes watched him leave. One, a pair of sparkling brown eyes, had watched the exchange with bright curiosity. The other, hooded black eyes, had been trained on him since he'd first sat down at the Slytherin table.

Once his breathing had returned to normal and his heart had stopped throwing itself violently against his ribcage, he slowed to a stop. Draco rested his forehead against the cool stone of the corridor he found himself in, one hand pressed against the rough surface. _If walls could talk, I wonder what you'd say,_ he whispered to the unyielding stone beneath his feverish skin.

_"Sev? I've been looking all over for you. I thought we were going to practice our transfigurations with each other?" the girl with auburn hair said, unable to fully conceal the hurt tone in her voice as she rounded the corner and spotter her best friend deep in conversation with a stocky Seventh year._

_"Mulciber." She greeted him icily._

_"Mudblood," he sneered. Lily ignored the insult. Once she would have, at the very least, sent a well-aimed hex at his crotch, but she was becoming too accustomed to hearing it that reacting was wearying. Mulciber gave Severus a pointed look and left the pair alone in the corridor._

_"Sev, what's going on?" Lily asked, edging closer to where her dark-haired friend was pressed to the wall, a look on his face as black as his hair. A look she didn't like. She placed an anxious hand on his arm and he met her eyes for the first time since she'd appeared in the corridor. That was all it took for the dark clouds to clear from his eyes, and suddenly he was the Severus she knew and loved._

_"Nothing, Lily. Sorry, I completely forgot about transfiguration." He offered her an apologetic half-smile, "Besides, even if I do practice, McGonagall will never give me more than an Acceptable. She really doesn't like me," he added morosely. Lily giggled, dragging another half-smile from her friend._

_She always marveled at how different he looked when he smiled. Gone was the old, tired expression that bespoke eyes that had seen far too much. The sallow cheeks that lent to his face a gloomy look were lifted, revealing cheekbones and an endearing, lopsided grin that she rarely saw lately. She hugged him tightly to her, gripped by a sudden sadness she couldn't explain._

_"I've missed you," she whispered into his neck. He could have told her that she was being ridiculous, that she'd seen him only yesterday, but he didn't. He said nothing, only wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug. When they finally broke apart, his eyes reflected the sadness that had inexplicably gripped her heart._

_"Sev, please tell me what's wrong. Is it Mulciber and that horrible lot he hangs out with? They're bad people, Sev –"_

_"You don't know what you're talking about, Lily. Just… Just drop it, okay?" he interrupted tersely._

_Lily stole back the hand that had unconsciously been resting on his arm as though stung. The gesture did not go unnoticed by Severus._

_"I'm sorry, Lils –" Now it was his turn to be interrupted._

_"No, you're right; I don't know what I'm talking about because you don't tell me, Severus. We used to tell each other everything. Now, you're keeping secrets from me and having heart to hearts with those __**degenerates**__. You know they're the ones who put Susan in the hospital wing? Oh, she says she doesn't remember who did it, but she goes pale every time one of them walks past her." Lily's eyes were blazing with passionate anger. Severus thought she'd never looked more beautiful, nor more distant from him._

_"You know I'd never do anything like that," he said, reaching out a hand which was promptly swatted away._

_"No, I don't. I don't know who you are anymore," she said, her voice cracking under the weight of unshed tears. She turned tail and ran from him. _

_He didn't follow her immediately – he knew better than to pursue her (the last time he'd tried, she'd sent an extremely unpleasant jinx his way which he'd been unable to remove until she saw fit to forgive him). Besides, for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure he wanted to follow her. He'd been offered the chance of a lifetime – the chance to belong and the chance to shine as he knew he could, two things he'd been waiting for, things that until now he'd only been able to find in her arms. But she was the catch: they wanted him, but he couldn't take her with him. She stood for everything they hated, and so he'd have to learn to hate her too. Or, he could continue to follow her, to be with her until she grew tired of him and cast him aside. _

_He sighed and pressed his head against the cool wall as though seeking a comforting touch. His eyes fluttered shut momentarily, then he pushed himself away from the quiet stone that smelled of time itself and set off to find her._

_For now, he'd made his choice._

Draco breathed in deeply, drinking in the smell of stone, musty cloth and the tangy sweetness of oil paintings. There was something else too, a barely noticeably aroma of citrus. He turned around, letting the deep breath he had taken trickle out of his nose slowly, and came face to face with Granger who was watching him curiously from a safe distance. How had she found him?

"Are you stalking me, Granger?" he asked, in as nasally superior voice he could manage. She stepped closer, and his eyes followed the movement warily.

"What's wrong?" she asked after a while, ignoring his poor attempt at humour. The question knocked Draco off his guard, so that his façade cracked further. Her eyes widened at what she saw (_what the hell did she see?)_ and she took another step forwards.

"Malfoy, what's wrong?" she asked again.

"Why do you care?" Too late, he realised that his reply as good as confirmed that something was wrong. _Weak._

"I asked first," she countered, the ghost of a smile playing on her face. He tried not to notice that she hadn't answered his question either. Too many unanswered questions, too many loose threads, too many _possibilities._

"Letter from father dearest reminding me how much of a disappointment I am," he replied with a bitter smile._ Why are you even telling her?_ his brain shouted, as his mouth ran on.

She took another step forwards.

_Stop stop stop_, Draco was chanting in his head. He was frozen to the spot, his muscles tensed like a gazelle ready to spring away from a lion.

"Granger?" His voice came out strangled, but she halted and it was enough to make him relax a little. But not a lot – she was still too close for comfort.

"Why are you a disappointment? I thought you were the perfect little Malfoy," she said. The way the words left her lips didn't exactly make it sound like an achievement to be proud of. "Is it school work?" she asked, worry evident on her face. Typical Granger: for her, there was no greater problem than school work. He envied her simple outlook on life. He was about to scoff at her when he realised that his grades _had_ been slipping steadily. Where once he had never dipped below straight Outstandings, now he could barely scrape Acceptable in his classes. It was, after all, hard to focus on the goblin revolution of 1654 when his mind was preoccupied with planning the murder of his headmaster. But he couldn't explain all of that to the girl with her wide doe eyes, so he settled for a nod. She returned his gesture with a look that clearly said _I thought so._

She began to worry her lip, debating something with her conscience. He watched her deliberation with something akin to bated breath, letting his silver eyes roam over her face. It was at once alien and totally familiar – a face he had looked at for years but never really seen until recently. She was slightly tanned, the golden brown on the point of fading back into cream, with a shower of freckles delicately sprinkled across her nose.

He must have been staring a little too intensely at her, because she reached up a self-conscious hand and brushed at her nose when she thought he was looking elsewhere.

"Okay, look, what is it you're struggling most with?" she asked him almost reluctantly. Draco was strongly tempted to reply that murdering the most powerful wizard in the world was pretty high up on his list of things he was failing, but wisely held his tongue. He also had to repress the urge to tell her that there was nothing a mudblood like her could ever help him with, but remembered that she was under no obligation to help him. In fact, it was most out of character…

"Wait, why are you doing this?" he asked, fear suddenly wrapping icy fingers around his intestines. Maybe Potter was on to him, maybe he had sent Granger to spy on him… Draco's mind crawled with conspiracy theories and he probably would have done something rash had the wall, the cool smooth stone beneath his back not cleared his mind. If Potter knew, or even suspected something, Draco had to find out.

"Out of the goodness of my heart. Who the fuck knows the reason behind anything I do these days? I certainly don't have a clue," she returned angrily. Draco was taken aback more by the bone-deep exhaustion in her voice - an exhaustion he had been sure he was alone in feeling – than by the oath she uttered (although that too was fairly shocking). He raised one eyebrow and grinned.

"I'm impressed, Granger. I wasn't aware those kind of words featured in the vocabulary of a typical know-it-all."

"I'm not a typical know-it-all," she said, in a strangely enticing soft voice. Was she flirting with him? "And believe me when I say that I know far worse words, all of which I could apply very easily to a description of you," she continued in a mock-sweet tone of voice. No, definitely not flirting.

He gave a low whistle through his teeth and advanced on her.

"I bet I could make you scream those words with pleasure," he said in a deep, soft voice he'd never heard himself use. He was playing a dangerous game with her – he had no idea how she'd react to something like that. But her reaction was better than he could have imagined.

She flushed a shade of red that Weasley would have been proud of, then hit him playfully on his chest.

"Pig," she muttered as he laughed, but she cracked a smile nevertheless. He caught himself laughing and frowned, almost ashamed of feeling so at ease with her. The moment over, she took the opportunity to excuse herself, clearly sharing the same feeling of guilt as he.

"I should go." She sighed, then added, "Come and find me when you figure out what you need help with."

Just as she rounded the corner of the corridor, she called over her shoulder, "Same condition as before – no one can know. But this time, don't fold my notes up like that," he smiled, remembering how he'd folded her notes up into little snakes and enchanted them to crawl into her bag a few weeks ago. He'd known that it would irritate her no end, which was the reason he'd done it in the first place. "And that's three favours you owe me."

Then she was gone, leaving nothing but the faintest note of citrus. Draco became more and more confused as he puzzled over their encounter, before giving up on trying to untangle the events and heading instead to his first lesson of the day.

* * *

It took him three weeks to get back to her. He knew exactly where to find her – that was never the issue. He just wasn't sure that he wanted to find her. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to visit the library, a place he had been steadfastly ignoring since their last encounter. He wasn't sure he was comfortable spending so much time alone with her, let alone being so vastly in her debt. But he was pretty effectively persuaded that, like it or not, he needed her help when he was awarded a Troll in Ancient Runes.

She was the only one in the library, the rest of the school having chosen to make the most of the rare sunny October weather they were having. He approached her cautiously and cleared his throat, unsure of the traditional protocol when being cordial with a girl normally considered his enemy. She was so engrossed in her work that she didn't hear him, but carried on scribbling furiously away. He tried again, louder this time, but to no avail.

"Granger!" he said eventually, frustration magnifying his voice. She jumped at the sound, causing ink to splatter her page.

"Now look what you've made me do" she grumbled, muttering a spell and vanishing the blot from her rows of perfectly formed letters. He didn't apologise: it would have been too out of character, and besides, he sensed that she wasn't actually mad at him but at something else.

"So… What's up?" he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching against a bookshelf. He was so uncomforable, so out of place.

"Are you here to chat or to improve your grades? Because honestly, I can think of plenty of people I'd rather be talking to," she said, barely looking up from her essay. He mumbled something barely audible, but she shot him such an angry look that he bit his tongue immediately and sat down beside her.

"Well?" she asked impatiently, dropping her pen after several moments of silence, filled only by the regular scratching of her quill on parchment and the beat strummed by Draco's fingers on the tabletop.

"Um… Ancient Runes?" he said tentatively. She pulled out a thick wad of notes from her bag (which, miraculously, wasn't bulging with all the things it containted) and dropped them unceremoniously in front of him before returning to his work.

"That's it then? That's how you're going to help?" The moment the petulant words left his mouth, he realised it was the wrong thing to say. He winced in preparation for the onslaught.

"Listen, Malfoy, don't make me regret this even more than I already do. I've got better things to be doing than helping you with your daddy issues," she snapped.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Merlin help him, his mouth was antagonising her. What a time for his brain to be absent.

"Like celebrating my 17th birthday," she replied, suddenly quiet. The fury had vanished from her eyes, leaving behind something much worse.

"I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't know," he said, at a volume Madame Pince would have been proud of.

"How could you? It's not like we even know each other," she said, picking at a half-erased name etched into the desk.

"Why are you in the library working on your birthday? And where are the idiots you normally voluntarily spend time with?"

"They're all out playing Quidditch, I think," she said in a tone that clearly implied her feelings about the sport.

"Not a fan? You go to all the games though."

She quirked an eyebrow. _Good going, idiot, now it sounds like you've been watching her or something._

"I go to the games because it's important to them," she replied as though it were obvious. Then again, maybe it was. Maybe that's what friends did for each other.

"More important that their friend's birthday?" Draco asked. Hermione bit her lip, and he got the feeling that he was asking a question that she'd been wondering herself. She brushed off the cloud that flitted across her face quickly, tapping the feathered end of her quill on the mount of Ancient Runes notes in front of him before returning to her own essay. They worked on in what could almost be described as companionable silence.

For the first time in a long time, Draco's mind was awash with a pleasant crackling of symbols and letters that reduced all thoughts of the future to background static and chained him firmly to the now. And if by chance his mind should wonder, it didn't go very far – travelling only the distance between the page and her face. Her dark eyes, framed by long black lashes, never once wavered or darted anywhere but the page where her hand was busily forming the looping letters that had burned themselves into his mind. Every so often, she would breathe in deeply, her eyes fluttering shut and her chest rising in a frankly distracting way as it filled with air. After every one of these deep sighing breaths her face would slip unconsciously into a countenance of peace and her lips hid a secret smile.

Draco grew so curious that he himself tried it, allowing his body to be guided by his lungs as a snapshot of the world slipped inside of him. The heady smell of old books and cracked leather bindings filled his head and then faded, leaving behind the subtler scents of wood, wet ink and parchment. Beneath all of this was the trace of citrus that was becoming distinctly familiar. He blew the last fragments of the moment out of his nose and immediately breathed in again, eager to taste a new moment.

"What are you doing?" Hermione said, interrupting his thought process and startling him so that the air he'd been savouring escaped his lips all in a blur. Draco looked up guiltily, caught in the act.

"Breathing," he replied, as though she were an idiot.

"Well, I don't need to tell you how much I wish you wouldn't," she returned bitingly. Draco clutched his chest as though wounded, an exaggerated picture of misery on his face. She smiled and was about to return to her work when Draco spoke again.

"I was trying to smell whatever it was you were smelling," he admitted. She looked at him quizzically, and he realised that he had probably made no sense at all. He was on the point of telling her to forget it when she spoke.

"It's the books. That smell has always anchored me – everything else in my life changes, but that smell never does. It's the same scent millions of people have smelled for thousands of years. I just find that comforting. It's like a constant throughout my life, to remind me that however much things alter beyond recognition, there's always that one thing that will stay the same, that will bring me back to myself. I guess the smell is my way of staying rooted, of threading together past, present and future. Nothing scares me so much when I smell it. It's weird, but everything with Voldemort –"

She noticed Draco's wince and broke off suddenly.

"Sorry, I'm babbling. Not making any sense, anyway."

Draco shook his head. "You made perfect sense. I just wish I could have found something like that. I could really, really use something to root me to sanity right now." He gave her a grim smile.

"What comforts you when everything goes wrong, then?" she asked after a few moments of silence.

"It used to be flying – I've never found anything else equal to that thrill of soaring higher and faster than birds themselves, until people and problems are microscopic and the world is a blur, until there's nothing but you and the wind, the smell of linseed oil and the solid broom beneath you. But then, of course, my father managed to find a way to ruin that for me too," he finished bitterly.

"How?" she asked, as though struggling to believe that his life was anything but simple. She only saw the spoilt Malfoy heir who only had to blink slightly petulantly to have his way.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Malfoy, just because I am about the furthest thing from a pureblood heir to an enormous fortune does not mean that I am incapable of empathising with your problems."

"I don't want your pity," he spat, irrationally angered by her understanding tone.

"Pity and empathy are two different things, Malfoy. Learn the difference before you bite my head off for trying to be nice to you. Now explain.

Draco sighed, but her tone signalled that she was not in the mood for anything but an answer to her question.

"He made it a competition, yet another thing I could disappoint him in. He felt he had to buy my way onto the team as though I'd never make it on without his money."

She nodded. "You think your father took away the one thing you really loved, but you're wrong." He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a silencing hand. "No one can really steal away what's in your heart."

When the hell did she get so wise in these things? She spoke like an adult who had the best part of their lives already. Or a child who'd fought with darkness so many times that they clung desperately onto the last shred of light they could see.

"Why don't you just quit Quidditch?" she said, after staring at him intently for a while. He grimaced.

"I can't." He read the incomprehension in her brown eyes and continued. "Leaving out the fact that my father would kill me if I ever even talked of quitting, it still works sometimes. Sometimes, if I block everything else out, it feels like a faded memory of what it used to be. And even that's enough for me not to let it go." She nodded slowly and they both returned to work.

"Granger?" he said a while later. "What does this say?" He was on the last but one page of her notes, which he felt was a considerable achievement given the number of pages there were, but he was struggling to decipher the words as her handwriting had suddenly become erratic and jagged.

"Oh, sorry, I think my hand was struggling to keep up with my brain there," she said, scooting closer until they were elbow to elbow. Her hair fell like a veil between them as she bent over the dense forest of words. He could see her lips moving as she tried to make sense of what she'd written. She reached up a hand and pulled back her hair so that the profile of her face was fully revealed. Draco let his eyes examine her, from the hollow of her collarbone, up her neck, around her tiny ears, following the line of her cheekbone until it met her almond eyes. At that moment, her gaze shifted sideways and her warm brown eyes with their liquid honey flecks met his own silver ones. She blushed and her eyes sprang back to the page in front of her. Draco, too, glued his eyes to the parchment but internally his mind was whirring.

"Okay, I give up. I can't figure out what that says," she groaned in frustration after several more minutes. Draco chuckled, amused at her expression of irritation.

"It's not funny," she said, pouting.

"It's pretty funny," he replied, still laughing lightly.

"Shut up," she muttered darkly, punching his shoulder in a way that was obviously not intended to hurt. He well remembered from third year that she could hit very hard when she wanted to.

"Hermione?" A voice that was clearly Potter's echoed from several bookshelves away.

"Shit shit shit," she whispered, paling. Draco briefly considered letting Potter find them, for the sheer amusement of the expressions that would disfigure his face, but he looked sidelong at Hermione who was in full panic mode and decided against it. She looked at him pleadingly, a look that said _don't_ and _please_ and _leave_ and even _sorry_. And Merlin help him but he nodded and scrambled away through the maze of bookshelves, pausing only to mouth _Happy Birthday_ at her.

Hermione passed him moments later, Potter with a protective arm around her shoulders as Draco lounge against a desk, the picture of arrogance. Potter shot him a glare which he parried with a smirk. Hermione avoided his eyes, but turned and looked back as she rounded the corner with another expressive look. This one said _Thank you._

* * *

Snape struggled to remember exactly when it was that he had taken to following around the Malfoy heir as he cowered behind a column of books several meters away from the two teenagers. He was too far away to make out their exact words, but he didn't need to listen to their inane drivel. The glances he stole from behind his make-shift refuge were enough to tell him that their mouths might have been moving but it was their eyes that were speaking.

There was no way, of course, that Draco could have known that the table he was sitting at had been Snape and Lily's own haven. They'd spent the vast majority of their years as friends with their heads bent together much in the same manner as the pair in front of him were now. He had no way of knowing, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

Snape's heart twisted uncomfortably in his chest as he peeked out from behind the books once again, only to witness a private moment between the two. Draco and Granger both flushed and hurridly averted their eyes from each other's faces, but the moment was sufficient for Snape to read the swirling molten currents of the teenagers' eyes. Snape knew full well the feeling of being dragged helplessly under the waves of green, swirling waters in Lily's eyes. He recognised the signs of the drowning man in Draco's face as the boy was hurried from the table, in the expression in his eyes as he turned back for one last look.

Snape knew, but did Draco?


End file.
